<p> Once viewed as a way to establish educational placement, high-stakes testing is used to establish benchmarks for success within school systems. Within a local Utah school district, raising these benchmarks has been deliberated due to a steady decline in Grade 8 language arts scores, which has heightened concerns among local school administrators and teachers. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the perceptions of teachers on how to improve declining Grade 8 language arts test scores. Based on the theoretical concepts of constructivism, 3 research questions were created to examine the underlying factors of the steady decline in Grade 8 language arts test scores, teachers&rsquo; perceptions of decline in Grade 8 test scores, and current instructional practices used by teachers to prepare students for high-stakes testing. Through semi-structured interviews, data were collected from a sample of 7 language arts teachers who held an academic degree in language arts area and were a faculty member at the selected school. Comparative analysis and the open coding process were used to find themes in the data. Specific themes included the need for change, different influences, and varying instructional practices to increase test scores each academic year. An individualized instructional curriculum might help increase test scores. A 3-day, in service workshop focused on helping teachers recognize current issues with test preparation and offered methods to help improve student learning through multiple intelligence-based instruction. This study contributes to social change within local Grade 8 language arts classrooms by providing information to educators on how to increase high-stakes test scores on an annual basis and increase overall student achievement. </p>

<p> This dissertation is a qualitative study in which I, the researcher and public school teacher, seek through writing the self in a narrative and evocative autoethnography to explore three emergent themes: My family&rsquo;s six year and six month circumnavigation, spirituality, and important literature that I have shared with other readers that direct our hearts toward God. Insomuch as the title posits living to remember God, my hope is to make the interior mind visible to my reader as I explore what embracing this position has meant to me; I hope in making myself vulnerable to speak to our human experience of love so that other educators may come to understand the need we have in our American public school classrooms to be guided by agape.</p>

<p> This narrative inquiry explored the ways in which four mid-career English teachers construct themselves as W/writers and how those writerly identities are performed in their pedagogy. I curated data collected from extended interviews, journals, personal and professional writings to build narratives of these teachers-as-writers. Through these narratives and metaphorical thinking (Lakoff &amp; Johnson, 1980), I analyzed the wholeness of each participant&rsquo;s experience with writing.</p><p> Then, in stage two of the study, I used data collected from teaching observations to build a continuum of process &mdash;> product, employing Goffman&rsquo;s (1974) frame analysis to place the teachers within that continuum. This continuum represented the stable thread that continued through the teachers&rsquo; personal and professional identities and led to three insights: (1) Those teachers who identified as Writers were more comfortable teaching writing processes (2) The desire to be seen as a &ldquo;kind of W/writer or teacher&rdquo; brings risk writing instruction and (3) Agency provides Writers a way to mitigate the risk of teaching writing.</p><p>

Though attention to academic language is a key component of the Teacher Performance Assessment and the new Common Core Standards, little has been researched regarding how pre-service teachers build academic language knowledge and integrate it into their practice teaching experience. This study focuses on the construction and delivery of academic language knowledge to pre-service teachers in a one year immersion teacher preparation program. It studies the pre-service teachers' use of academic language knowledge in their planning, teaching, and assessment throughout a practicum and clinical experience, as well as their use of academic language knowledge as part of reflective practice. Through analysis of classroom observation notes, interviews, and artifacts, the data show that after receiving instruction on academic language concepts in the areas of content-area terminology and language use, reading, and writing, pre-service teachers consciously integrated an attention to the terminology and language use of their content area into their practicum experience. However, faced with understanding themselves as teachers while navigating their mentor teacher's expectations, learning the curriculum they are teaching, and developing classroom management skills, etc., attention to academic language instruction in reading and writing was limited. Recognition that content-area terminology and language use is key to accessing content, though, influenced reflection on how content knowledge is accessed. This conscious understanding of the role terminology and language use plays in accessing content knowledge opened the door for a deeper reflection on the role academic language plays in the classroom. And, during their post-practicum clinical experience, these pre-service teachers were able to more knowledgeably reflect on how to integrate specific content-area reading and writing instruction into curriculum. These conclusions suggest that an introduction to academic language concepts and practices can reveal "blind spots" that enable pre-service teachers to better address content-area literacy in their future practice. They also suggest that more focus in academic language instruction in teacher education programs could help pre-service teachers more efficiently learn the complexities of their new role.

Over the past decade, politicians, businesspersons, and educators have pushed for “higher,” “tougher,” and “world-class” standards for K–12 students. This standards movement includes state standardized, curriculum-based tests. Massachusetts recently developed the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). MCAS is considered a high-stakes test because a passing score determines graduation for students, and sanctions and rewards for teachers and schools. The experiences of 16 Massachusetts English teachers in teaching under the MCAS high-stakes testing requirement were explored using a qualitative research method known as in-depth interviewing from a phenomenological perspective (Seidman, 1998). These participants taught a variety of students in a range of Massachusetts public schools. Over the course of three 90-minute interviews, each participant established context through life histories, detailed their current teaching experiences, and made meaning of these experiences. Using an inductive process of analysis, data were reduced and coded; essential features, relationships, and patterns were explored. The findings were organized into three major themes. This study found that teachers narrowed their curriculum, changed instruction, and designed classroom assessments to match the content and skills that MCAS tests. Teachers associated both gains and losses with these changes. Moreover, this high-stakes test both enhanced and undermined their professional identities. MCAS and related professional activities empowered teachers; MCAS also disempowered teachers by imposing policies that controlled curriculum and instruction, threatened sanctions, and damaged reputations. Teachers voiced their socio-political analysis of the theories that underpin this high-stakes testing movement, the motives behind MCAS, and the current state of education. The findings reveal that the line between educational reform and improved education is neither unidirectional nor linear. Rather, it is a complex web of influences, motives, and actions. How policy winds its way into practice depends on the varied contexts in which teachers perceive and experience reform. This study suggests implications for policymakers, politicians, teachers, teacher educators, and researchers. Among other things, it makes a plea to policymakers and legislators to define what they mean by standards, re-examine the narrow content of the test, and include teachers as legitimate participants in making policy decisions that affect them and their students.

The current case study evaluates a program of professional development aimed at engaging two groups of elementary teachers in communities of practice (CoPs) focused on improving teachers' vocabulary instruction and students' vocabulary learning. The professional development program took place over five months in the 2008-2009 school year. The purpose of the evaluation was to evaluate the merit and worth of the professional development program and identify changes that could be implemented by the primary evaluator in future efforts to develop and refine an effective method for teaching teachers about vocabulary instruction. An explanatory case study design was used to achieve a deep understanding of the program using both quantitative and qualitative data analyses. The evaluation measured aspects of collaborative practices engaged in by teachers over the course of the program, as well as teachers' instructional practices and students' learning before and after program implementation. Evaluation questions were designed to explore the theory that teacher collaboration leads to increases in teacher knowledge and skills, which in turn lead to increases in teachers' classroom use of new knowledge and skills, which ultimately lead to increases in student achievement. Overall, the evaluation was successful in that it was able to clearly describe the collaborative practices engaged in by teachers, provide evidence of teacher and student learning, and provide extensive insights into changes and improvements that were then implemented in an extension to the CoP in the same district during the subsequent school year. Additionally, the evaluation uncovered key variables that may act to impede teacher collaboration.

Teaching for social justice is the attempt by classroom teachers to use their position in the classroom to promote social and educational reform within and despite current educational conditions and mandates. However, while a growing number of K-12 teachers have published anecdotal reports of their attempts to teach for social justice in secondary classrooms (e.g., Bender-Slack, 2007; Christensen, 2000; Singer, 2005), there is great variability among these accounts, and scant evaluation of their impact on specific academic, behavioral/motivational, and attitudinal outcomes (see Grant & Agosto, 2008; Kelly & Brandes, 2008; Poplin & Rivera, 2005). This qualitative study addresses this research gap by offering a concrete framework for teaching for social justice that is informed by multiple education reform traditions (including democratic education, critical (Freirian) pedagogy, multicultural education, culturally responsive education, and social justice education) and associated with positive academic, behavioral/motivational, and attitudinal outcomes. Next, I present the results of a constructivist grounded theory analysis examining how twenty-four English Language Arts teachers conceptualize teaching for social justice, as well as a content (lesson plan) analysis detailing how they operationalize the practice through the use of standards-based curriculum. Findings indicate that secondary ELA teachers define teaching for social justice as having three primary dimensions: curriculum, pedagogy, and social action. These priorities are reflected in their curriculum, which addressed all four strands of the Massachusetts ELA Curricular Frameworks (Language, Reading and Literature, Writing, and Media) and a range of social justice topics. Additional study findings examine challenges associated with teaching for social justice, the impact of teachers’ identities and school contexts on their social justice practice, and variance in how teachers conceptualize and implement teaching for social justice according to their sociopolitical emphases. This study has several implications for policy and practice. Specifically, this study challenges critics’ attempts to portray social justice education as poorly aligned with academically rigorous content-area instruction (e.g., Will, 2006), offers curricular guidance to pre- and in-service teachers interested in transforming their own practice, and lays the foundation for future empirical research related to how teaching for social justice affects student outcomes.

This dissertation describes the design, implementation and assessment of a staff development project to develop a cooperative whole language approach. The foundation for this staff development project for elementary school was the recognition that language development is crucial to a child's ability to succeed in the school environment. The educational objectives of this project were to motivate and encourage students of low income, African American families to write imaginatively and productively, and to teach writing to those same students to help them develop their own stylistic competence. These objectives necessitated the organization of three components. First, a staff development program focused on a whole language approach so teachers could share cooperative learning strategies for improving selected aspects of writing instruction. Second, a language experience approach in which the language, experience, and feelings of minority students could be used to advance motivation, accuracy, and pride. Third, the creation of a positive school climate to help students overcome difficulties in communicating in standard English by developing a "school way of communicating" without forcing the student to conclude that the way the family converses at home is wrong. Cooperative learning staff development sessions, predicated on a whole language approach, combined five underlying principles: (a) Distributed Leadership; (b) Heterogeneous Grouping; (c) Positive Interdependence; (d) Social Skills Acquisition; and (e) Group Autonomy. These prompted the preparation of writing activities for the African American students in all aspects of the curriculum. Ongoing monitoring of students' progress and completed tasks were compiled in both a group and individual portfolios. Basic to the success of this project was overcoming six beliefs: (a) a single set of subcultural customs shape the behavior of African American members of our society; (b) language programs should involve only instruction in using standard English; (c) all African American children are apathetic and their classes are seldom exciting; (d) discipline is a unique problem in the African American classroom; (e) African American learners cannot become involved in inductive, inquiry centered learning; and, (f) staff development sessions are not required for teaching English to the African American child. The proposed goal of this effective staff development project was not to change, but, to add a new dialect to an existing one by using a child centered, whole language, cooperative learning approach. By mixing the students' own experiences and the presentation of new experiences, a new dimension was introduced. The students were meeting established norms of success and were eager to accept additional challenges. Class improvement was clearly visible in a low income, urban elementary school.

Students with difficulties learning foreign languages typically come to the university with a history of foreign language failure and native language problems. Often, a foreign language requirement is difficult to complete and is the cause of great anxiety for the learner with linguistic difficulties. The Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the participating university established a one-credit modified add-on course that at-risk students could take to receive extra support in Spanish. Selection of participants was made according to Ganschow and Sparks' (1991) Foreign Language Screening Instrument. “At-risk” students were asked to participate in the study or were recommended for enrollment into a learning assistance paired course. In this class, students were exposed to a variety of techniques that attempted to accommodate a diversity of learner needs. Results from quantitative measures of change in perceptions of Spanish language tasks over time were inconclusive; on pre- and post-instruction similarities ratings, subjects weighted tasks in a uniform fashion along four interpretable dimensions. To further explore the effectiveness of a modified support course, additional qualitative data were collected on student satisfaction questionnaires and on learner reflection essays throughout the course. Final semester grades and grades on in-class performance measures in the foreign language were also examined to support the notion of inclusion in the foreign language classroom. Findings from this study revealed that such a course had positive effects on the learners, and that the learners benefited from adjustments to the foreign language pedagogy. However, it may not take an extra, learning assistance paired course to achieve these effects. Results from a survey of 27 instructors of Spanish and Portuguese revealed that the teachers are both willing and able to implement such teaching strategies so as to create an inclusive atmosphere that appeals to the needs of all learners. This study showed that incorporating such teaching strategies into the regular Spanish classroom as a part of the course design can effectively provide an alternative to the course waiver and substitution model of accommodation, and that triangulation in the research methodology provides a more complete portrait of the at-risk learner's foreign language learning experience.

The general purpose of this study was to obtain information about foreign language teachers' instructional practices, evaluation procedures, and attitudes. The specific purposes were: (1) To obtain relevant demographic and attitudinal data pertaining to the in-service training needs of selected foreign language teachers. (2) To apply data obtained to in-service training program planning initiatives. (3) To study the relationships between demographic and attitudinal data obtained and in-service training program planning. The study outcomes present a demographic profile which suggests a generally healthy climate for foreign language education in the state as evidenced by teachers' professional involvement, awareness of current practices, concern about issues, and agreement with a proficiency-oriented approach to foreign language education. The data suggest areas of concern and future direction for officials of the state department of education and the state foreign language association as they do long-range planning to meet global and student needs in foreign language education, and to meet the specific needs of the foreign language teachers in Massachusetts. Officials of other state departments of education and foreign language associations might look to the results of this study to assess the professional growth and development needs of foreign language teachers.